Over the last twenty years, India has enacted legislation to turn development goals such as food security, primary education, and employment into legal rights for its citizens. But enacting laws is different from implementing them. A Human Rights Based Approach to Development in India examines a diverse range of human development issues over a period of rapid economic growth in India. Demonstrating why institutional and economic development are synonymous, this volume details the many obstacles hindering development. The contributors ultimately ask whether India’s approach to development is working and whether its right to develop is at odds with its international commitments.

Moshe Hirsch

Bharat Ramaswami

Ashok Kotwal

Moshe Hirsch is the Von Hofmannsthal Chair of International Law and co-director of the International Law Forum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Specializing in international economic law, public international law, and international legal theory, he is the author of Invitation to the Sociology of International Law and has contributed to the International and Comparative Law Quarterly and the European Journal of International Law, among other publications. Ashok Kotwal is a professor of economics in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia. He is a development economist with a particular interest in development processes in India and their impact on poverty. Kotwal is also the editor-in-chief of the Ideas for India online newsletter on Indian development research findings.Bharat Ramaswami is a professor of economics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi. He received the 2004 Indian Econometric Society Mahalanobis Memorial Medal for his work in quantitative economics. Much of his work studies food, agriculture, and employment in the processes of economic development.